Companies face new cost pressure from AI push, Microsoft cuts Claude Code access

Companies are pushing employees to use more AI to boost efficiency and cut costs, but this is creating new cost pressures. Microsoft has stopped giving most staff direct access to Claude Code and is pushing its own AI coding tools instead, just six months after actively promoting Claude Code. Uber exhausted its 2026 AI coding budget in just four months.

Nvidia's VP of applied deep learning said computing costs are now far higher than employee salaries. Goldman Sachs expects global token consumption to grow 24 times by 2030. Gartner predicts inference costs may drop nearly 90%, but AI agents consume far more tokens, so overall costs may not fall accordingly.